After years of emotional debate, the Boy Scouts of America are considering a proposal at their annual meeting to allow gay youths to participate openly in the popular organization for the first time.The exclusion of gay Scouts has been the subject of much wrangling and soul searching in the century-old organization -- from local troops and councils to online petitions to national board meetings. T...

When a devastating tornado touched down in Moore, Okla., on Monday afternoon, Shayla Taylor was on the upper floor of the local hospital, in active labor with her second child.As the floor shook “like an earthquake” beneath her and ceiling tiles and insulation fell overhead, the 25-year-old huddled with four nurses, braving both the peak contractions of childbirth and the wrath of the worst twiste...

SPOKANE, Wash. -- A 37-year-old man was arrested Wednesday after a pair of letters containing the deadly poison ricin were discovered in Washington state last week.A grand jury indictment accuses Matthew Ryan Buquet of mailing a threatening communication to U.S. District Judge Fred Van Sickle at the federal courthouse on May 14.The indictment did not say anything about ricin. However, the U.S. Pos...

The Obama administration publicly acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that U.S. drone strikes have killed four American citizens since 2009, including the previously undisclosed death of a North Carolina resident who left the United States for Pakistan and was later indicted on federal terrorism charges.Attorney General Eric Holder, in a letter to congressional leaders and chairman of key co...